Georg Lukács and Revolutionary Realpolitik, 1918–19: An Essay on Ethical Action, Historical Judgment, and the History of Political Thought

“Bolshevism as a Moral Problem” and “Tactics and Ethics” were discussions of political ethics closely related to Max Weber’s contemporaneous “Politics as a Vocation.” They diverged from one another in their historical assessments of possibilities for ethically responsible revolutionary action. They are best understood as developments of an approach to political judgment originally forged by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, whose concerns were associated by Weber with Realpolitik and which continue to animate discussions of “political realism.” Overwriting these concerns as transitional moments in personal conversion narratives or the history of political thought has an inhibiting effect on historical and political judgment.